After serving an apprenticeship in Clyde shipyards Winton moved to the United States in 1880, worked in iron mills and as a steamship engineer, and became a bicycle manufacturer in Cleveland in 1890. He built a gasoline-powered car in 1896 and in 1897 formed the Winton Motor Carriage Company. In 1897, as a demonstration of endurance, he drove one of his models from Cleveland to New York City, a trip lasting from July 28 to August 7. In March 1898 he made the first sale of a regularly produced American automobile, and for some years he remained one of the leading U.S.automobile manufacturers.

Winton built four- and six-cylinder engines and was the first in the United States to build a straight eight-cylinder engine. His racing car “Bullet No. 1” set a speed record of one mile in 52.2 seconds at Daytona Beach, Fla., in 1902. In 1912 he founded the Winton Gas Engine Company, now part of General Motors, to do experimental work on diesel engines.

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Ransom Eli Olds, whose name is familiar from the long-lived Oldsmobile, was also active in gasoline-engine research in the 1890s, after initially being interested in steam; so were Alexander Winton and James Ward Packard. By 1898 more than 100 companies had been organized with the intent of automobile manufacture.

...welder in the company, Charles E. Thompson, devised a way to adapt cap-screw manufacturing methods to the production of automobile-engine valve stems. Thompson took his idea to the pioneer automaker Alexander Winton, who was so impressed that he bought Cleveland Cap Screw and installed Thompson as general manager. In 1908 the firm’s name was changed to Electric Welding Products Company, and,...